I expect I’ll take some lashings for this opinionated piece, but I have to get this off my chest. You see, I want to help you be a successful practitioner of content marketing. Anyone who knows the keyboard shortcuts for cutting and pasting can serve you content—content they didn’t create. Are you cutting it with curation?

Following a rant against some forms of noisy automated publishing that he calls content curation (and that I wouldn't even call that), Barry Feldman provides a great guide to value-adding content curation.

The truth is that content curation has been associated by some to automation. And yes there are tools that will automatically build some content feeds for you. From early on, I've always thought that curation was fundamentally human and that while technology could empower people, replacing them is going a step too far in many domains as this post brilliantly explains. When it comes to content publishing, algorithms are useful to discover content, but deciding on what to publish, how to publish and how to editorialize it are not things a robot could do well.

Which is why on Scoop.it, we automate content discovery and facilitate distribution but let our users in full control of the publishing stage.

So don't be a robot and to make the most of your content curation, read the great tips Barry that he develops in this article: focus on a topic, add value (“Be meaningful. Add your insight or opinion when sharing the content."), target, condense, etc... And of course here's also our own top 10 best practices on SlideShare to understand how to concretely do that on Scoop.it in a very visual way.

The process of disavowing links through Google is a mystery to many, and several misconceptions have surrounded the tool's use since it launched. Here are seven facts you need to know to get the most benefit out of the Google Disavow Links Tool.

It's no secret that Google has been working hard to push its social network into the mainstream. Google has killed off some of its own products — e.g, the late Google Reader — in an attempt to drive more users into the arms of Google+. A more common tactic, however, has been to create bridges between the…

Where do you get the data needed to measure your social media customer experience program? Columnist Dave Evans shares data sources and importantly, how to put social data to work to further your business goals.

"Measurement leads to insight; it helps us better understand customers and markets. These insights can explain what’s behind your performance and return metrics, enabling you to drive those metrics higher. This is valuable when you are trying to fine tune and improve results."

As he higlights in his article, the key to the final equation is what ROI you anticipate in order to impact your bottomline.

Without much fanfare or publicity, Google quietly updated the Link Schemes/Unnatural Links document inside the Webmaster Tools section of their site last month.

If not for the excellent work of Barry Schwartz, many of us would have missed it. (I have a page change tool app set up for that exact URL, and it didn’t catch it for several days.)

Since this news hit the mainstream linking/SEO community, there’s been no shortage of reporting on the changes themselves, with nearly 6,000 results for the exact match search phrase “google updates link schemes.” The Web is certainly a remarkable echo chamber, considering this news is less than three weeks old as I write.

Instagram may be an interesting marketing tool for your business. Even if we do not think about this possibility at first glance. This post will give you some ideas on how to do it for you and / or company.

A Preview Of The Marketing Land Digital Marketing Summit, March 11, 2014 The Marketing Land Digital Marketing Summit will give you a big picture look at the issues that will impact your marketing plans for this year and beyond. The new, day long program features keynote level, Ted-style solo presentations from industry visionaries representing search, […]

Research shows social channels are becoming more important signals in major search engine algorithms that affect the entire SEO and local search landscape. However, effective local and social media marketing is a time-consuming and daunting, yet important, effort for local businesses.

Research shows social channels are becoming more important signals in major search engine algorithms that affect the entire SEO and local search landscape. However, effective local and social media marketing is a time-consuming and daunting, yet important, effort for local businesses.

While the history of communication until the end of the previous century has only been focusing on enlarging the distribution to a few published or broadcasted content creators, we now live in information overload where content curators can be the new super heroes.

My personal belief is this: in the near future, if you want to stand out in your niche, get a serious following of passionate fans and build a strong credibility for yourself, you will need to do something better than just writing blog posts (however good they may be).

"Recently Martin Laetsch, Act-On’sDirector of Online Marketing, presented a webinar covering the 10 most important rules for successful search engine optimization.Not all of them are 100% new, but they’re all critical keys to success. ...You can catch up with the whole on-demand session here."

In this article the focus is specifically on rule n.1: Create content with your audience in mind.

Rekha Mohan writes: "The main point to all this is: create content people want to share. People like sharing interesting information; it builds credibility, creating the image that the sharer is in the know, and consistently sharing good information increases your audience.

Good information also helps visitors and increases your authority on a subject – use white papers, case studies, fun facts, educational material, research results, thought-provoking blog posts, how-to articles, top 10 lists, and more to share your information in innovative and easy-to-read ways."

Very good reminders for anyone having doubts about what's best to do in the near future, to gain extra visibility and reputation, on any content web site.

Every time I speak about marketing, I always make one opinion very clear: content is still king. I firmly believe that no amount of social media marketing, SEO strategy or PPC is going to have as much of an impact of your success as the use of content. Not only when it comes to blogs, but when it comes to any kind of site whether monetized, or not. Even ecommerce sites should be putting a large chunk of their focus on exploiting content.

But when it comes to content marketing, what tips are really ‘smart’? Which methods of content marketing are going to give you the greatest gains? Here are the five smartest content marketing tips for bloggers....

You hear a lot of talk these days about crowdsourcing — the idea of using a large online community to complete tasks as diverse as compiling an online encyclopedia (thank you Wikipedia!) or creating a database of popular bars that directs you to watering holes around the world. It’s such a great concept, and yet, based on my conversation with other B2B content marketers, I’ve found that it hasn’t been incorporated into many content creation and promotion strategies.

That’s why I’ve put together this short list of questions that will help you gauge how good a job you are (or aren’t) doing of crowdsourcing your content creation efforts. If you can’t answer yes to all of them, chances are that you’re missing out on a few opportunities for easy wins....

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.